


Vignettes of Black and White

by PerfidiousFate



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfidiousFate/pseuds/PerfidiousFate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world isn't okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vignettes of Black and White

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tekuates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekuates/gifts).



> Watchmen is a series that I care about a lot, so I really loved getting this prompt! I doubt I can this series much justice since it's such a monumental text, but I adore the characters so much that I wanted to write them a moment.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this fic, and have an awesome Yuletide! <3

 When Laurie was a little girl, she used to watch her mother put on make-up. It seemed magical to her – add a little lipstick, some eyeliner, and presto, you're a completely different person. (This was before she realized what her mother being a costumed hero _really_ meant, in terms of PR and masks and fighting crime.)

 "Laurie," her mother would say, gliding dark over her eyelids with smooth, flowing strokes. The sun filled the room with golden syrup, shining bright and high. "You mustn't stare so much, darling, you're putting me off."

"I like watching," Laurie admitted. "You're really pretty."

Her mother laughed, a tinkling sound. Back when Laurie was that age, young and innocent, she thought that was the nicest sound ever. "Thank you, sweetheart," her mother told her. "But you should've seen me in my youth. I would turn heads as I walked by! Men would be falling all over themselves to cater to my whims." She sighed. "Ah, yes. Those were the good old days." The dust in the sunlight was sparkling, like floating little crystals.

She sounded wistful, although Laurie didn't realize that at the time – she was too young to realize the extent of her mother's unhappiness with her lot in life. Too young to try and live out her mother's dreams for her.

"But when you grow up, you'll turn heads too," her mother added, and capped her lipstick. Her lips were so red that she looked more than human, a fairy tale vision trapped in the body of an aging woman. "All the boys will kill for just a glimpse of that smile."

Laurie blushed then, pleased but embarrassed at the thought. Her own youth seemed incontrovertible then, an obstacle in the way of a glowing future she was absolutely certain was coming.

Nearly three decades later, Laurie was dating a god, and the hopeful childhood memories had diffused into nothing. She'd sit there and watch Dr. Manhattan work, much like she'd watched her mother put on makeup, only that Jon was blue and paid less attention to her, and oh, was basically a god. She'd sit there and watch him work, and she'd remember dressing up in skin-tight outfits and punching criminals, and wondered who she really was.

"It's just," she told Dan at lunch once. "Have you ever thought your life would turn out... _differently_?" She grabbed a bite of her pasta.

He'd nodded at her, wry. "I didn't see _this_ coming, no." He didn't ask for her to elaborate. He always knew exactly what she meant. Sometimes more so than she did, confused as she was. She loved that about him, a little bit.

Dan gave her moon eyes sometimes, all sad and shiny and longing, and she pretended she didn't notice. He gave the same eyes when talking about Rorschach too, sometimes, and she pretended she didn't notice that either.

 When all was said and done, Laurie didn't like Rorschach. He was creepy. With all the other heroes, she could get some sense of them beneath their costume – Veidt's intelligence and charm, Dan's kindness, Blake's cruelty. The only ones she couldn't get a sense of was Rorschach and Jon. Jon because he never really wore a costume (or was always wearing one, depending on how you looked at it), and Rorschach because she wasn't convinced he _was_ a person, beneath the mask. How do you _talk_ to someone like that?

 She'd asked Dan about it, although not in those terms because Dan sometimes got strange and flustered and shifty when talking about Rorschach. Instead, she'd asked about his famous friendship with him.

"We've all heard how you worked together professionally," she'd said. "But how did you get along with him behind the scenes?"

Dan furrowed his brows, considering it. He always took what she said seriously, no matter how inane or jumbled it was. She liked that he never treated her like a joke or an after-thought or a distraction. Not like Jon did, as year after year passed by and the memory of that electric first kiss they had shared faded.

"It was _strange_ ," Dan admitted, after several moments had floated past. "We were friends. He wasn't always so – "

"Insane?" Laurie proposed. "Violent? Creepy?"

"Well," Dan hesitated, not wanting to admit that she was right. "He wasn't so _driven_."  He smiled sheepishly. "He was always a little, uh, strange, but we got along well enough. I miss having him around. If I hadn't retired, that is."

"Hm." Laurie was unconvinced, but she could tell from the way Dan's eyes had gone all soft and misty again that it was no use arguing. Instead, she changed the subject to her mother's latest phone call until Dan looked like he was with her again, in mind as well as body. She didn't give that conversation much thought afterwards. Dan had his opinions, and she had hers. What use was it to try and talk someone out of it?

And then Rorschach died.

* * *

 

She hadn't realized it at first. To be fair to her, every time that she blinked she could see the piles of charred corpses on the streets in front of her, and she had to do everything in her power not to scream and sob and vomit until everything that had made her human was emptied out into the void around her and she would cease to be.

Dan had noticed. He'd probably realized it long before they had proof, when they walked outside, her in that silly short costume that she'd pulled a coat over and him in that white get-up. They'd made their way over to where the snow was dyed with red. He'd walked over to where a hat lay lonely, picked it up and said nothing for a long, long time, even as the winds howled around them and Laurie shivered in her sad attempt at appropriate winter wear.

It'd been sad, of course. Shocking to see someone you'd known and heard talk disintegrated into things. Worse still to know that the only one who could have done it is someone you'd loved, once, who'd taken you to an alien planet and debated life with you. Laurie had felt something tight constricting around her heart, and she'd realized that no matter how little she'd cared for Rorschach, she still grieved for him.

But it was hard to feel grief for one death among millions. Harder still when she knew that she was one of the only people who could do something about it, give justice to those people (but at what cost?). So instead she'd grabbed his mask, grabbed Daniel, and pretended not to notice that when he made love to her again on the way back to America, he whispered _Rorschach_ as often as he whispered _Laurie._

* * *

Rorschach died opposing a king by the hand of a god. There were worse ways to die.

That was a callous thought. Dan immediately felt guilty for thinking it, however late it was, however awake he felt despite the weird buzzing that permeated through their motel room and the lateness of the hour and Laurie's soft, even breathing from beside him. She'd cried, and then fucked him, and then cried some more before falling asleep, and this was the first time he'd seen her peaceful since this whole mess had began.

 Since this whole mess had ended, he should say.

 Rorschach wouldn't care about the way he died. He wasn't that type of person. Death was death. Evil was evil. A madman killing millions to assure peace for all was still a madman.

 He wouldn't have kept quiet. Not like Dan and Laurie had tentatively agreed they'd do. That was why he died. He had to.

 What would he have done otherwise? Dan tried to imagine Rorschach escaping with him and Laurie. Sleeping in their motel room with them. Buying blond hair dye, arguing with Laurie over whether strawberry blond or honey blond was better. Not that it _mattered_ , but Laurie thought that honey suited him more, and it was comforting to argue over stupid, mundane things like that when the fate of humanity pressed down upon your shoulders.

That wasn't the point. Dan couldn't see Rorschach doing any of those things. Couldn't see him giving up like they had done. Never surrender, he had said. Well, look at where that got _him_.

 That was another callous thought. Dan didn't mean it. He never would mean it. He loved - Dan pursed his lips, rolled over and wound his arms around Laurie, and pretended that he wasn't crumbling on the inside a little more.

 Before the Keene Act passed and he was forced into retirement, Nite Owl partnered with Rorschach. They brought down gangs, and costumed villains, and stopped drugs. Rorschach would sit in Archie, feet propped up on the dashboard no matter how many times Dan had asked him to be careful, and he would scribble in that journal of his. Occasionally, he'd relate in his gravelly voice a detail Dan had missed, or ask Dan for thoughts on motives. Sometimes he'd snack.

Once, Dan had kissed him. It was after a particularly thrilling mission, a battle with a group of robbers, and it was straight-forward and simple and exactly like the adventures he'd read about the original Nite Owl participating. It was like something out of a comic book. No horror or ambiguity or ethical dilemmas, just a bunch of bad guys and them.

 Dan had enjoyed himself more than he should have. And at the end of the battle, once they'd tied the bad guys to various nooks for the police to find, and once they'd entered Archie and grabbed some coffee, the singing of adrenaline and excitement that he hadn't felt since it was the forties and he'd first read about Hollis Mason, he leaned over and captured Rorschach's lips with his.

The mask felt cool and plasticy under his lips. Rorschach hadn't moved, either to push him away or to reciprocate. Dan leaned away.

"Sorry," he'd said, apologetically. "Didn't – uh. Didn't mean to do that." He swallowed, face on fire. "Got caught in the moment. Sorry," he repeated, quieter.

Rorschach shook his head. "No matter," he said. "One time mistake. Happens. Did you catch the license plate on the van out back the warehouse? Read the first part. Got distracted by the man with the chainsaw before finishing it." And just like that, the conversation had never happened.

 That memory always had the tinge of regret. Whether that he had kissed Rorschach, or that he had not pressed the topic, Dan didn't know. Now, with Rorschach's hat and the mask that Laurie had grabbed, he regretted not finding out what he regretted.

How funny. Millions of people dead, and he was thinking verbal circles around a friend's death.

There was that word again.  _Death_.

 Back in the sixties, before Rorschach had started killing people with little recrimination, back before Dr. Manhattan seemed as scary and alien as he was now, back before Laurie had grown that shattered, battle-hardened look, back before the smartest man on the world exploded a major city, Dan was Nite Owl and Rorschach was Rorschach, and they'd fought crime. And it wasn't as good as the stories he'd read about Nite Owl, but it wasn't - it wasn't - 

 Dan closed his eyes, and pretended his lips weren't tingling as he fell asleep.

* * *

Laurie woke up alone. At first, caught in the hazy half-state between being asleep and being awake, she didn't realize. It was only when she felt her mind clearing that she felt how cold she was. Dan...? She woke up in a panic, gasping, grasping at the bed beside her.

 He'd gone out to rent them a car, the note that sat on her bedside table said. He'd be back soon and he loved her and they were out of coffee. She clutched at the note and breathed in, feeling the cold thread of panic within her gradually unfurl into numb acceptance. 

 She still saw bodies when she closed her eyes.

 To get her mind off the panic that still lurked beneath the surface, the same panic she'd felt when the world was on the brink of destruction, she got up and took a shower. She avoided Rorschach's hat and his mask that they'd put on top of the wardrobe - it felt weird, going past it. After she was done, she brushed her teeth and washed her face. The bathroom was full of steam. She examined her face, the circles under her eyes. She leaned closer to the mirror, and drew a smiley face in the condensation still on the glass. It looked accusingly out at her. A bead of water rolled down, just to the left of the forehead.

 Something about this unnerved her. Furiously, she scrubbed at the mirror with her hand, until the smiley face was gone. She'd used to draw them all the time when she was younger, to make herself feel better when she was upset. Now it seemed to be mocking her, a fake attempt at a pleasant demeanour in a situation that was nothing _but_. Suddenly, Laurie remembered watching her mother put on makeup when she was younger, and telling her about all the boys who'd like her smile. She clenched her fists, suddenly realizing how upset she was.

What a joke...! She'd spent her whole life trying to live out her mother's dreams of days gone past, and now...

 She was crying again. She'd cried so much over the past few days. Millions of people dead to bring life, the Comedian was her father, and a creep who she never really liked was dead and she was still hurting.

A while ago, a comedian died. An end of a story that began a story. Now, as Laurie looked into the mirror at her teary self, despite the future of peace that seemed suddenly within the world's grasp, she wondered if the joke ever really _ended_.


End file.
